Marriage Equality: June 2010

There's a new cry of outrage coming from the far right of American Politics and conservative circles. As more of their arguments against social issues like LGBT equality get shown time and again to be based on personal bigotry, private...Read More

In the last few years, there has been a lot of ink (some of it digital) spilled on the decline of print media as news and entertainment outlets, and the shifts to online. Last week's piece by Michael Lavers in...Read More

Montana's Republican Party platform has gone the same way as Texas: Homosexual Acts We support the clear will of the people of Montana expressed by legislation to keep homosexual acts illegal. I remember posting back in 2008 during the Obama/McCain...Read More

Editors' Note: Jude Stevens is a straight woman, a mom and has been married for 32 years to the same wonderful man.She is a molecular biologist, her best friend is a lesbian, and she believes that every human deserves equal...Read More

The Christian Legal Society (CLS) is a national organization of Christian lawyers and law students. Students at the University of California's Hastings College of Law formed a chapter in 2004 at Hastings, and applied for school recognition. The school's policy...Read More

Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdottir (the first openly gay head of state government in the world) married yesterday, the first day same-sex marriage was recognized in Iceland. She and partner Jonina Leosdottir (right) had a civil union and then filed for...Read More

If ever there was a bi-partisan no-brainer it is that every hospitalized patient should be able to name his or her visitors, subject to a medical reason to exclude them. The proposed regs emerging from the Obama administration (on line...Read More

Gay Pride in Paris yesterday was long. Four miles of marching in the heat, with a parade that was two to three hours long if you stood in one point and watched it go by. The crowd is estimated by...Read More

Bilerico Project is partnering with Hyperion books to give away three copies of Maggie Griffin's upcoming book, Tip It! The World According to Maggie Griffin, in a couple of weeks but we had a chance to run this Q&A with...Read More

Lots of Prides are happening this weekend, and in coming weeks, and there have already been a few. Reed Cowan, the director of 8: The Mormon Proposition wants all Prides canceled until we can get married. (Full equality now! Corporate...Read More

Michael Lucas has another bash-Europe/Muslims column in The Advocate, which has taken a pretty hard anti-Gaza line since the flotilla was raided. I noticed a few factual errors, and could probably find more if I actually googled any of his...Read More

The Supreme Court ruled yesterday in Doe v Reed that individuals who sign referendum petitions generally do not have a First Amendment right to remain anonymous. But the Court also held that courts should consider the particular facts in any...Read More

The Supreme Court ruled 8-1 to in favor of Washington State's Public disclosure laws allowing petition signatures to remain public. This was a significant case originating from the Referendum 71 campaign in Washington State. Opponents to the Domestic Partnership law...Read More

I'm actually enjoying Kirsten Palladino's column on gay wedding etiquette at 365gay.com, mostly because of the bizarre questions she finds. Please tell me queers like this don't actually exist. Question: My wedding's coming up in a few months, and my...Read More

Although living with HIV, many of them have never been able to speak openly about their HIV status. Their HIV physician could be located hours from their home. But once a year, on a "family cruise line" far out to...Read More

A lot is being written about the CNN documentary airing tonight, kicking off their "Gay in America" series, called Gary and Tony Have a Baby. It premieres on CNN tonight, June 24 at 8pm ET & PT and on CNN...Read More

She was the mistress of her domain consisting of a modest colonial on a corner lot in an energetic post war suburb, with a husband and three sons, the oldest of which am I. She did not like the huge...Read More

I was recently sent a screener of CNN's upcoming broadcast of Gary and Tony Have a Baby (which airs at 8pm on Thursday). In it, Soledad O'Brien walks us through the lives of Gary Spino and Tony Brown as they...Read More

Oral arguments make for great theater, but any experienced lawyer will tell you that they usually don't count for much. What matters far more to the outcome of a case is the quality of the record (i.e., the evidence) and...Read More

Yesterday, the New York State Senate passed the Dignity for All Students Act (DASA). The bill empowers the New York Commissioner of Education to establish policies and prohibiting harassment and discrimination against students based on a number of categories, including...Read More

National Organization for Marriage, the organization that has jumped into fights for the freedom to marry for same-sex couples around the country, is launching a Summer for Marriage tour. In announcing the tour, Director Louis Marinelli declares supporters to be...Read More

President Obama hosted several state-level activists and leaders yesterday evening for a Pride reception at the White House. I know there's a million and one reasons to be angry that more hasn't been accomplished under Obama's administration, but I'm still...Read More

"I firmly believe that marriage equality will one day, proudly, be the law in the state of California. My faith is rooted in my personal evolution on this subject." -- California Senator Dianne Feinstein in an interview with The Washington...Read More

Yesterday I received an apology from Christopher Harrity, Manager of Online Production, apologizing for misidentifying my photo as Briana Freeman. It's quite clear that it was not malicious, but simply a matter of not paying close enough attention while google...Read More

The windbags of the Christian Right often claim that Christians are being persecuted as part of their demagoguery used to shake down money from the ignorant and uninformed. Sadly, the news media generally gives these professional Christians a pass and...Read More

The Irish government this week removed its objections to a 2007 Irish High Court judgment. The High Court held that the Irish government violated Irish law by failing to make provisions to recognize sex reassignment for transgender people. The Irish...Read More

Last weekend my wife and I drove five hours to Bakersfield. I held a free coming out workshop where people learned the 5 keys to coming out and my wife led a free media training workshop to help LGBTQ people...Read More

The part of the Texas Republican Party's platform making its way around the blogosphere says they want to imprison people who participate in marriage ceremonies for same-sex couples, even if those ceremonies have no legal meaning. It also calls for...Read More

"We support legislation that would make it a felony to issue a marriage license to a same-sex couple and for any civil official to perform a marriage ceremony for such." --Texas GOP platform...Read More

"Chuck Cooper is a heckuva lawyer. At stake in this case is the future of marriage in all 50 states, and he's right that this attempt to shut down the debate by constitutionalizing gay marriage will backfire. Americans have a...Read More

I went to the opening day and closing day of the Prop 8 trial. While not a legal type, I still have a huge investment in the outcome of this if nothing else besides being a lesbian living in California....Read More

ENDA's chances of passing this year are minimal. The LGBT community can still be legally fired for just being who they are for the foreseeable future. Don't Ask, Don't Tell's repeal remains in limbo. The repeal of the Defense of...Read More

(An expanded version of this interview appears in the current issue of South Florida Gay News.) Joan Rivers sat down for an interview anticipating the June 11th release of the documentary film covering the 75th year of her life, Joan...Read More

In a move that isn't that surprising (but which nonetheless stings), Proposition 8 supporters want to 'revoke recognition' of the 18,000 legal same-sex marriages that occurred in California before the marriage ban went into effect. Removing any doubt about how...Read More

Yesterday we heard compelling closing arguments in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the federal challenge to Proposition 8. The National Center for Lesbian Rights was in the courtroom live-tweeting, making sure that you shared this historical moment with us. I was in...Read More

In his most famous speech, my good friend Harvey Milk urged LGBT people to come out of the closet. "For invisible, we remain in limbo," he said. Harvey knew that full equality would not become reality as long as the...Read More

Alex Blaze was gracious enough to be a judge in Blog 4 Equality Netroots Nation Scholarship Contest sponsored by Freedom to Marry and co-sponsored by Bilerico, Americablog, Courage Campaign, Daily Kos, Open Left, and Rod 2.0. Three winners of the...Read More

NYU Political Science Professor Patrick Egan has studied 10 years worth of public opinion polling conducted during election campaigns involving same-sex marriage ballot questions, and has found in a new poll on same-sex marriage ballot measures [pdf] that such polls...Read More

Pride parades will take place all over the country this month. As we all rev up for this year's festivities, so, too, the fault lines of race, gender identity, and class will emerge. In addition to Gay Pride events, there...Read More

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. George W. Bush might have been slightly better president if he’d listened to the women in his family. That’s become even more evident, now that he’s safely out of office, and...Read More

The COO of McDonald's was interviewed by the Chicago Tribune and they got into that French gay ad that Bill O'Reilly compared to al-Qaeda. It's also the ad that got the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce upset since...Read More

I have spent the past year working intensively, day in and day out, on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. I have learned a lot from this experience. One thing I have learned is this: the idea that politics or politicians are...Read More

Kristin Davis is running as an independent candidate for New York Governor on a platform of pot, prostitution, and gay marriage legalization. She's also the former madame who supplied former Governor Elliot Spitzer with high class call girls. She's...Read More

Duncan Osborne turned up a 1996 memo from Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan arguing that religious freedom should trump compliance with state anti-discrimination laws. A case involved a straight couple in California that wanted to rent an apartment so they...Read More

Like any parents, we want the best possible future for our children, and we're doing all we can to prepare them to attain it as our parents did for us. Being the grandson of sharecroppers and the son of 1st...Read More

Rightwing nutjob Tony Perkins is on the attack again. This time he's after my Governor, Mitch Daniels. Perkins has his knickers in a twist because Daniels told the Weekly Standard that whoever the next President is, they "would have to...Read More

When they were new, Chatroulette and the subsequent Manroulette caught my attention. I never used them to have sex, a process that when mediated by technology makes me laugh uncontrollably, but I was fascinated by the randomized serving up of...Read More

On Monday night I attended the Seattle International Film Festival screening of the new documentary "8: A Mormon Proposition." The screening was at the Egyptian Theater, a beautiful old two story theater on the crest of Seattle's gay friendliest neighborhood,...Read More

This appeared in one of my Google alerts because of the name of the lawyer, but it's definitely a queer issue. It takes a lot of chutzpah to do this to a worker: Jarrestta Hamilton said April of 2009 was...Read More

In the LGBT community we have an addiction. An addiction to boxes. Who am I? I'm a spiritual progressive HIV- white middle-class educated bisexual non-poly cis-gender queer male blogger and LGBT rights organizer & activist. What does that mean? That...Read More

During the four months since the big Prop 8 trial ended, Judge Vaughn Walker has presumably been reviewing the transcript and drafting his opinion. Yesterday he issued a list of questions "to assist the parties in focusing their closing arguments"...Read More

Yesterday Judge Vaughn Walker, the judge overseeing the federal trial on the validity of Prop 8, issued a series of questions he'd like the parties to address in their closing arguments. Rick Jacobs, chair of the Courage Campaign, wrote on...Read More

A new poll released by the University of Washington shows a surge in support for marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples. The poll was unique in that it did not ask a binary question "Should gay couple's be allowed...Read More

Add Portugal to the growing list of countries that recognizes same-sex relationships (the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Canada, Spain, South Africa, and Sweden). Same-sex marriage started there yesterday. Helena Paixao and Teresa Pires, the first lesbian couple to get married in...Read More

Editors' note: Laura Matanah is the Publisher/Executive Director of Rainbow Rumpus, the online magazine for youth with LGBT parents. What if the societal rights accompanying a legal marriage came in a vending machine? For a mere $10, you could select...Read More

I've become accustomed to reading tons of really out there comments from readers. Some are cruel to another commenter or the author of the post, others are incomprehensible, and many are just, well, odd. You wonder what was going on...Read More

The NY Times profiled lesbian conservative Eve Tushnet, and she had this to say about same-sex marriage: But same-sex marriage, she wrote in The New York Post in 2007, "can bring one of three outcomes: A two-tiered marriage culture, where...Read More

The oil gushing in the Gulf of Mexico is keeping me up at night. The destruction, ignorance and inaction are just so HUGE. For generations to come the waters, plant life, fish... well let's just say the entire fucking ecology...Read More

In 2002, New York State passed the Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Law. There was a bitter fight at the time regarding transgender inclusion. Ultimately, the decision was made to pass the law without transgender inclusion, with the promise that a separate...Read More

The Washington Blade has a story on the Michael Moore v. Virginia Museum of Natural History case wherein the Supreme Court of Virginia refused to hear Moore's appeal. For those not familiar with the case, Moore was fired by the...Read More

Most of you know I'm the Executive Director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights. Thirty-three years ago, we were founded by two attorneys seeking to help secure the parenting rights of lesbian mothers who were losing their children when...Read More

John "what I as a gay man have in common with a man who wants to cut off his penis" Aravosis started the perennial conversation, and it wouldn't be a perennial conversation if I didn't jump in. Here's the title,...Read More

There's no doubt our nation's changing its collective mind on the gays. A recent Gallup poll showed that 52% of Americans believe same-sex love is "morally acceptable." Sure, it's not an astounding number, but it's still the highest in history,...Read More

Florida Governor and US Senate Charlie Crist just can't seem to make up his mind about who he is. The so-orange-he-could-outshine-John-Boehner politician has long been a man of shifting values depending on who he's talking to and what political race...Read More

Some progress: The same-sex partners of gay and lesbian federal workers can start applying next month for long-term health-care insurance, the Office of Personnel Management said Tuesday. That's great, because long-term health insurance can be incredibly expensive. The more people...Read More

According to recent studies, most soldiers are OK with the idea of gay comrades in arms, but the generals would have us believe that straight military personnel are trembling with fear at the thought of the elimination of DADT. I...Read More

Tuesday morning, HBO's Outrage! subject Michael Rogers sent the gay/progressive blogosphere abuzz when he revealed that Rep. Mark Kirk had been sexually involved with two men in both his undergraduate and law school years. According to Rogers, these two men...Read More

Today I received in the mail (at my home address no less) an unsigned, unmarked theological terrorism note. When I collected the mail, I looked through it all as usual, tossing the "immediately recyclable" pieces into the bin, and taking...Read More

Tipper and Al Gore are getting divorced. Forty years of marriage and they don't hate each other, there is no other man or woman. Just grew apart. Life does that sometimes. Gotta go here, gotta do this, you have your...Read More

Author's Note: Over the past five years, hundreds of bloggers from around the world have participated in "Blogging for LGBT Families" on June 1st, including lesbian moms, gay dads, bisexual parents, transgender parents, adult children of LGBT parents, LGBT individuals...Read More

When I heard Rand Paul’s statement about the civil rights act, I had a sense of deja vu. Not only that I’d heard them before, but that I run into the peculiar conservative phenomenon they represented: wanting have it both...Read More

We have been speculating here at The Bilerico Project as to why ENDA failed in this Congressional session. Of course, the fight for ENDA isn't over in this session, but even if it passes the House, it's likely too late...Read More

"It's ridiculous and I'm really upset that Obama, as a black man, and all the things that African-Americans have gone through after being oppressed, has said 'you're less than' and cannot stand up and say marriage is a union between...Read More